Natural stone export of Turkey can reach 10 billion dollars

Turkey is the luckiest country in terms of reserve and color selection in natural stone. 40 percent of the global natural stone reserves is located in our lands. However, we can only get a share of 10 percent with our export of 2 billion dollars out of the global stone export of 20 billion dollars. In fact, it is not difficult to increase our share in the global market in line with our reserves and get the natural stone export of Turkey up to 8-10 billion dollars. We must take better advantage of this luck. We can put on the market the latest trending stone. We have stones that are not much effected and changed by the fashion. The quarries we had opened before and closed with the thought they would not work, are very fashionable now, as example grey Stones. If we go towards to the extreme products, defeat the perceptions in our country, include the local administrations with regards the use of domestic stone, we can make it up to places nobody has imagined.

As Aegean Mine Exporters’ Association we participated as Turkey in the globally biggest natural stone fair organized in Xiamen, China on March 6-9. Turkey, participating with 140 companies and on an area of 7 thousand 500 square meters, was the biggest participating country among the international participants.

We expect an increase over 23 percent in export this year

China has terminated the policy of investment suspension that lasted for four years. In 2018, we aim an increase over 25 percent in the export markets, especially in Chinese and Indian markets. As the natural stone sector, the export goal of this year is 2.5 billion dollars. We must bring in the Money that is the subject matter of marble trade. We declared 2017 as the lost year with regards to the country’s economy due to the coup d’état attempt and the following events. We were really like after a hurricane. But the Credit Guarantee Fund (KGF) and Eximbank Credits stepped in with such a timing that we had a growth as 11.1 percent in the export of Turkey and 23.4 percent in our sector in that lost year. KGF and Eximbank credits were real life line support.

In the last 7-month period last year, when India has exempted taxes and funds, our export to the country increased by 54 percent. With the fact of 54 percent growth in 7 months, we expect a growth of over 100 percent in 12 months. Our expectation regarding growth in 2018 is exceeding 23.4 in total natural stone export. We worked with the motto “out of spite production, out of spite export” in 2017 and we succeeded. We expect the acceleration increase even more this year.